


Tolerating Uncertainty

by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 05:04:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3315131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/Perpetual%20Motion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Webster and Liegott after the war and after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tolerating Uncertainty

**Author's Note:**

> Much love to the_wordbutler for a fabulous beta. Long sentences are long, and she is the queen of knowing when to cut.

Webster gets drunk as hell the day the war ends. He’s not alone. There’s booze left over from V-E Day, and then Captain Nixon rolls up to the resort with a truck full of even more. Webster is tempted to ask where he got it, but he knows he won’t get a real answer.

“Look at this shit!” Liebgott shouts as he helps George and Perconte unload the crates. “Web! Be useful, for fuck’s sake!”

Webster rolls his eyes and jostles Liebgott as he walks towards the truck to do his part.

It takes less than an hour for the whole company to be splayed out on the huge lawn of the hotel, drunk as all hell. Webster’s got his jacket under his head as a pillow, and he’s staring up at the blue, blue sky. There’s a mostly full bottle of wine in his right hand. His left is tucked behind his head, helping prop his head up enough he barely has to move to drink.

“Web!” Liebgott shouts, and he stumbles up to Webster, stripping out of his jacket and his undershirt as he stands over him. “C’mon. We’re going swimming.” He smacks his lips at the end of the sentence, like he’s tasting the words he’s just said. 

Webster shakes his head, and it feels fuzzy and funny, so he does it again. “Nah, I’m staying here,” he says. 

Liebgott drops down next to him, then flops sideways so his head is on Webster’s stomach. “I’ll stay, too,” he says.

“You don’t have to.”

Liebgott doesn’t answer, and no one else comes over to drag them toward the lake. He turns his head so he’s looking at Webster, and Webster looks back at him. Even in his drunk mind, Webster knows this is weird. Liebgott sitting next to him—head _on_ him—and not yelling? This is weird.

“This is weird,” he says out loud. “You’re supposed to yell at me.”

Liebgott stares at him and licks his lips. “Am I?” he asks.

“You always do,” Webster says. “All the time.”

“I do not.” Liebgott reaches toward the bottle, and Webster moves his arm so he can hand it over. He watches Liebgott tip his head back to drink and sees the scar on his neck. Liebgott finishes drinking and thumps the bottle against the ground, his hand still around the neck of it.

“Your scar ever hurt?” Webster asks.

“Yeah, sometimes. Yours?”

“Yeah. My leg, too.”

Liebgott takes another pull of the wine then holds the bottle up and angled toward Webster. Webster takes it back, taking a drink of his own. They lie in silence for a few minutes. Webster watches Liebgott reach up and touch the scar on his neck. 

“You really think I shouldn’t have shot that guy?” Liebgott asks.

Webster looks up at the sky again. He wants to say “No, you shouldn’t have shot him. It was wrong.” But the sky is so blue, and the wine is good, and Webster’s spent a lot of time thinking about what Liebgott did. Thinking about Liebgott in general, really. “I don’t know,” he finally says. 

“God, you’re so wishy-washy,” Liebgott groans. 

“I am not.”

“You are too.”

“I am not!”

Liebgott thumps his fist against the ground. “Goddamnit, Web! Just admit you hate me!”

Webster nearly upends the wine bottle when he scrambles up to his elbows so he can look at Joe more closely. Joe doesn’t move his head from Webster’s stomach. “What?!”

“Just admit you hate me and what I did!” Joe yells. “Just admit it!”

“I don’t hate you! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Joe tips back his head so he can see Webster better. “I hate it here,” he says. “I hate being here.”

“It’s beautiful here.”

“No, it’s not.” Joe closes his eyes, and he breathes in hard and shuddery. 

Webster lets go of the wine bottle and presses his hand to Joe’s chest. He expects Joe to push him away, but he doesn’t. Just breathes in harder, and Webster can see dampness in the corner of Joe’s eyes. “Jesus, Liebgott,” he says. “You’re a maudlin drunk.”

Joe chokes, laughs, then brings up a hand to scrub at his eyes. “Fuck you, Web. At least I didn’t lie about going to college.”

“I did go to college. I just didn’t finish.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Joe sing-songs. His eyes are still closed.

Webster curls his fingers on Joe’s chest. Joe is warm from the sun. The wine is making Webster’s head spin. “Liebgott?”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing,” Webster says, lying back down. His fingers slide off Joe’s chest as he moves. 

“You could have kept your hand there,” Joe says.

“You’re gonna have to move up if you want it there,” Webster says without thinking. He waits for Liebgott to give him shit, call him lazy or something. Instead, Liebgott just scoots up until his head is resting over Webster’s sternum. Webster puts his hand back on Liebgott’s chest. 

“Web?”

“Yeah?”

“You really don’t know if I should have shot that guy?”

Webster stares up at the blue, blue sky. “I really don’t know,” he says. “Ask me in a year.”

*

David skips classes on the anniversary of the war ending. He knows they’ll discuss it in his history class, and he’d just rather not. He stays in his apartment near campus, and he’s just opened a bottle of wine when there’s a knock on the door.

He is and isn’t surprised to find Joe on the other side when he opens it. His hair is longer than David remembers, and he looks thinner, like he’s not really been taking care of himself. “You look like hell,” he says.

“We can’t all just coast back to Harvard after playing soldier,” Joe says, the bitterness harsher than David remembers.

“Come in,” David says rather than fight. He closes the door once Joe steps inside. “Take your coat?”

Joe shrugs out of it, and David sees the hard lines of the bones in his wrists. “You got anything to eat?” Joe asks.

“You sure you still eat?” David replies. He hangs up Joe’s coat in the closet and isn’t surprised that Joe’s glaring at him when he turns around. “Sandwiches?” he asks.

“Fine. Whatever.”

David leads the way into his tiny kitchen. He takes out supplies for sandwiches and stops when Joe shoulders past him and starts opening cupboards. “What are you looking for?”

“Glasses,” Joe says.

“To the right of the sink.” David waits until Joe has pulled out two glasses and walked to the table where the wine is before he goes back to the sandwiches. David puts mustard on bread and watches Joe pour. “You really do look like hell,” he says. “You all right?”

Joe thumps the wine on the table hard enough it splashes on his hand. He licks it off his knuckles and sits down hard in one of the chairs. “I don’t know,” he says. “Some days, I’m okay. Other days, I’m sure if I eat I’ll just puke everywhere.”

That explains the weight loss, David thinks. He finishes the sandwiches and brings them over to the table, sitting in the chair across from Joe. “Eat,” David says.

“You don’t outrank me,” Joe replies, but he bites into his sandwich. 

They eat in silence. David doesn’t break it when Joe gets up and makes himself a second sandwich then sits back down and eats that as well. 

“What?” Joe asks as he reaches for his wine.

“What are you doing here?”

“You want me to leave?”

“No,” David says, and there’s a hard pull in his chest he’s not expecting. “I was just wondering.”

Joe takes a long drink of wine. He leans back in his chair, then slouches down hard like he just can’t hold himself up anymore. “Mind if I stay the night?” he asks.

“Of course not.”

Joe looks at him, his eyes narrowed. “What’s your play, Webster?”

David laughs, harsh and short. “I don’t have a play, Joe. You asked if you could stay. I said yes. I’d like to know why you’re here, but you don’t seem to want to talk about it, so I’m not gonna—”

“That guy on the mountain,” Joe interrupts. “You said come back in a year and ask you again.”

It takes David a moment to pull the memory. He remembers how blue the sky was. “Well,” he says. “Are you going to ask?”

Joe pulls a face. “You’re such an ass.” 

There’s an undertone that makes David clench his hand around his glass. Joe sounds mad, but not like David is used to. He doesn’t sound mad at the world; he sounds mad at himself. “I’ve thought about it,” he says. “And I still don’t know, Joe.”

Joe doesn’t move, but David sees something behind his eyes flare and die. “Well, that’s super helpful. Glad I came across the country to get nothing.”

“Hey,” David says, thumping his hand on the table. “You want the truth, or you want me to lie so you’ll feel better?”

“How do you not know? You’ve had a year to figure it out, Harvard.”

“If it’s so uncomplicated, why are you here?” David asks. “If it’s easy to answer, why do you look like hell?” 

Joe’s expression turns mutinous. His hands clench into fists. His chin is sharper than David remembers. His ears stick out more. His scar looks bigger, but David knows that’s a foolish thought. “Fuck you,” Joe says, and that holds the same weight and feel that David remembers.

“Fuck yourself,” David replies. 

They fall into silence again. If David was writing about it, he’d say it sparks and pops. Joe stares at him, and David meets it, same as he always has.

“You got a second bedroom?” Joe finally asks.

“No,” David says. “But the couch is okay.”

“Wanna see a movie?”

“Sure.”

*

They go to the movie, then David takes Joe out for pizza. Afterwards, they go back to the apartment, and David pulls another bottle of wine from a cupboard.

“Us regular people, we drink beer,” Joe says.

“You didn’t have a problem with wine this afternoon,” David replies, putting the unopened bottle on the table next to the empty one. He pours them each a generous glass and carries both glasses and the wine bottle into the living room.

“Your couch is shit,” Joe says.

“No, it isn’t,” David replies. He puts the wine bottle on the coffee table and holds up his glass in a toast. “To the end of the war.”

“Jesus Christ, are you serious?”

“Feel like we should mark it in some way. It was sort of a big deal for us.”

“Stop talking, Web,” Joe says.

They drink in silence, and they fall asleep leaning on each other a little. David wakes up sometime in the middle of the night, and Joe’s fallen over, his head in David’s lap. David touches his thumb to the scar on Joe’s neck, and Joe snorts and shakes his head and wakes up.

“What?” he says.

“Why are you here, Joe?” David asks.

Joe stares up at the ceiling, and he doesn’t seem to notice David is stroking his neck. “I don’t know,” he says. 

David strokes his scar again. “You ever think about how we both got injured at the same time?”

Joe blinks slowly, then turns his head so he’s making eye contact. “Did we?”

“Yeah.”

“Think it means something?” Joe asks.

“I don’t know,” David replies. He curls his hand around Joe’s neck, and when he presses lightly, Joe lifts himself up and breathes against David’s mouth just before David kisses him. 

They kiss for a while, then they shift until they’re both lying on the couch, front to front. They fall asleep again, and when David wakes up, the sun is coming in the windows. Joe is already awake, looking at him with no expression on his face.

“What?” David asks.

“What was that?” Joe replies. 

“I don’t know,” David says. “But I didn’t mind it.”

Joe rolls his eyes. “There’s a ringing endorsement.”

“I liked it,” David amends. “I liked it a lot.”

Joe closes his eyes and curls in closer to David. David puts an arm around him and curls in closer himself. “Mind if a stay a little while?” Joe asks. 

“No,” David says. “Stay as long as you like.”

*

He thinks it’ll last a week, maybe two, but during week two, Joe gets hired on as a barber at the place just off campus, and in week three, he comes home after work with a week’s worth of groceries. They spend their evenings with David studying and Joe reading comics or one of David’s books. They argue some over dinner. They don’t kiss again.

They start sharing David’s bed in week four. The temperature drops overnight, and David wakes up in the wee hours to Joe shoving him over and swearing about how fucking cold the living room is.

“So open the goddamn radiator vent,” David mumbles.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Joe replies.

When David wakes up in the morning, Joe’s plastered against him. David touches his hair, then his shoulder blades, and when Joe lifts his head and looks at him, David pulls him in for a kiss without thinking.

“What the fuck are we doing?” Joe asks as he pulls away, not like he’s disgusted, but slow and careful, like he doesn’t want to really pull away.

“I don’t know,” David says. 

“You know anything, College Boy?”

“I like having you here,” David says. “It feels good.”

Joe presses his forehead to David’s shoulder. “The shit I did in the war—”

“I know I missed Bastogne, but you’re a Toccoa man, Joe. Whatever you did, you did it because it needed to be done.”

“Even the German on the mountain?”

David still isn’t sure on that one. “Yes,” he says, and it doesn’t feel like a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> To the anon on tumblr who wanted drunk Webster, I hope you enjoy this!


End file.
